Airports within the UK are largely working as scheduled following days of flight chaos resulting from a problem with air traffic control.
Round 2,163 flights have been affected after Nationwide Air Visitors Companies (Nats), the UK’s air site visitors management supplier, issued an alert over a “technical issue” causing disruption on Tuesday, 8 September.
Delays and cancellations continued on Wednesday at aviation hubs together with Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Manchester, as travellers tried to reorganise flights.
No less than 300,000 passengers would have been impacted, based mostly on the 30 per cent cancellation fee of flights, stated aviation analytics agency Cirium.
The aviation disruption has stabilised as of Thursday night, with simply 54 of three,028 scheduled arrivals cancelled or not working – representing 1.78 per cent of all flights, it added.
For departures, 47 of three,033 scheduled flights are affected (1.55 per cent).
That is solely barely larger than a traditional day, says Cirium.
Heathrow stays probably the most affected, with 23 arrivals and 12 departures cancelled as we speak.
Nats chief Martin Rolfe was summoned at lunchtime on Wednesday to see Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, to account for the disruption.
It’s the third main incident brought on by a Nats system failure in three years, following important points in August 2023 and July 2025.
Mr Rolfe has been given per week to collate a report on the explanations for the technical failure after the transport secretary stated she did “not consider the difficulty was unavoidable”.
He has come beneath important scrutiny from airways this week, together with Wizz Air and BA. In an announcement, Ryanair chief working officer Neal McMahon described Rolfe as an “overpaid failing” boss, and referred to as for him to be sacked.
In the meantime, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is conducting an impartial evaluation, has advised passengers that the “disruption brought on by the Nats outage is prone to be thought-about the results of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ beneath passenger rights guidelines”.
Which means that affected passengers will unlikely to be entitled to compensation.
Sometimes, the phrase is known to imply “political instability, meteorological situations incompatible with the operation of the flight involved, safety dangers, sudden flight security shortcomings and strikes”.
Flights from the UK and EU airports (in addition to these within the wider EEA) are normally topic to European guidelines.
A cancellation, or perhaps a delay of hours quite than minutes, may set off the duty for an airline to offer a lodge room and meals as applicable. If the airline is accountable, it would additionally owe a whole bunch of kilos in money.
After Tuesday’s nationwide chaos, nevertheless, airways will possible argue that the disruption was out of their management.
Learn extra: Your refund rights and why compensation is ‘unlikely’ after airport chaos